On today's show, we have a special guest, Michael Knowles. He's a CNN commentator, writer, and podcaster. We talk about the recent verdict in the Derek Chauvin case, the Black Lives Matter movement, and whether or not the Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a woke movie.
00:04:10.000So before we get started, go over to TimCast.com, become a member, and get access to exclusive Members Only segments.
00:04:16.000You just go to the website, you click Members Only, it should be very easy, and then you see this thing over here, it's like, hey, look at that, you can become a member.
00:04:22.000We're working on making the site, getting new payment options and everything, but for the time being, you know, here's how you do it.
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00:04:30.000I've been shouting out this segment we did, with Charlie Ladoff.
00:04:33.000Because, you know, Charlie was this really funny guy.
00:04:41.000And then we do this bonus segment with him, and all of a sudden, he gets, like, real somber, and he's like, let me tell you some of these stories about, you know, being on the ground during 9-11.
00:04:49.000Man, he told me some stuff that sent chills down my spine of what some of these journalists and reporters do.
00:06:21.000At the time was I did not know what the outcome was going to be.
00:06:24.000So I felt like either way you're going to disappoint one group or the other.
00:06:28.000I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again.
00:06:31.000And I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.
00:06:36.000Do you think this lady reasonably feared Trump supporters or conservatives rioting and showing up at her house?
00:06:41.000I think she feared insurrectionists, and I know that we're supposed to believe that Trump supporters are the insurrectionists, but we did see an insurrection last year.
00:07:49.000They're probably not reading the news, so we're not going to have a mistrial.
00:07:51.000But I bet you got something on appeal.
00:07:53.000So what he's saying, when he says, I bet you got something on appeal, he's saying, I should declare a mistrial, but I'm too cowardly because I don't want them to burn down my house.
00:08:01.000And so here's my only point on it is, okay, this juror comes out and says, yeah, I was terrified of the mob killing me and burning down my city.
00:08:09.000Why is the judge on the appeal going to feel any differently than the judge during the trial going to feel any differently than the jurors?
00:08:17.000Everyone's afraid of this terrorist left-wing mob because they not only are making the threats, they're credible threats because they already did it and they already got away with it.
00:09:03.000I guess, for one, I don't really think it's a conservative and liberal thing.
00:09:09.000I think the issue is, I often describe it as politically initiated and uninitiated.
00:09:13.000So why is it that, you know, I'm a fairly moderate kind of, you know, left-leaning libertarian type, and we're laughing and agreeing, it's because we both know true facts.
00:09:22.000There's probably some things we disagree on in terms of what we think may be real, But as individuals who are discerning of the news and seeking out the truth, we both know certain facts.
00:09:45.000In their defense, by the way, Tim, let's just take that story that happened two days ago in Columbus, where the cop shot the girl who was stabbing the other girl.
00:09:54.000about to stab I'm sorry yeah about it was it was just all well and good that kind of you know you're a kid you there's no way to know you don't know it's a little innocent shanking between friends and so if you were just a regular American Right, a regular kind of liberal American, you don't watch your show, you don't watch my show, you're, you know, maybe you don't watch podcasts.
00:10:18.000Maybe you watch network news, which is still the way millions of Americans get their news.
00:10:22.000And you watch NBC, and you watch Lester Holtz broadcast the nightly news.
00:11:20.000added a flare as if they were doing an edit because it was the weirdest thing ever.
00:11:25.000She goes, he touched my breast, he touched my breast.
00:11:27.000And then the screen flashes white to cover up the punch.
00:11:31.000And then it shows her getting pepper sprayed.
00:11:33.000And the story they run is woman, sexual, you know, teenager is sexually assaulted and then pepper sprayed by Trump supporters.
00:11:38.000And I'm like, man, that's the news we get.
00:11:43.000And the problem is, you know, my pal Andrew Klavan makes this point a lot.
00:11:47.000When we read the news or we watch a news story about something that we know about, we can look at it and say, hmm, yeah, that doesn't sound right to me.
00:12:45.000And so, especially when it comes to foreign policy, we get into wars because of it, because the American people are just, I guess I just trust it.
00:12:53.000And so that's kind of why I think the easiest example of This is true.
00:12:59.000The real political divide, or I shouldn't say the real, but one of the strongest, is do you actually pay attention to the worldly affairs?
00:13:06.000Because you and I will disagree on politics, but we agree on what's happening with the world, which allows us to, you know, applying a standard American moral framework, come to similar conclusions on what should or shouldn't be.
00:13:16.000And there's also, if you really want to get woke to the political scene, one has to recognize there is a difference between how the government is supposed to work and how the government works on paper and how the government actually works and the kind of real ruling establishment.
00:13:31.000And actually the right wing is finally waking up to this a little bit.
00:13:35.000When you know for 20 years the right-wing talked about how there's the you know The public and the private and the government and business and you know public government bad Private business good and yeah, maybe this woke multinational corporation is undermining our entire country and culture, but but they're good They're good Company give money to company give tax cut to company and government even though the government is an expression of our own political wills through Through our elected representatives.
00:14:20.000The way we govern ourselves is we persuade one another of things.
00:14:23.000If three companies are controlling that, that, practically speaking, is the government.
00:14:28.000You know, I go back and forth on this sometimes, depending on the news, depending on, you know, how it's, it's hard to gauge whether we are winning or losing.
00:14:35.000And by we, I mean, the people who believe in individual rights, free expression.
00:15:15.000It popularizes the myth of police going around hunting minorities and things like that.
00:15:19.000But they also have now opened it up to more adult-themed content, to put it mildly, like news coverage, very serious issues, swearing even.
00:15:28.000And so maybe that's a move in the right direction.
00:15:30.000I wonder, though, if some of the relaxation is just because the election passed.
00:15:37.000They're always really nice to us when it doesn't matter, you know?
00:15:41.000But when it really does matter, they... I mean, I think we actually did see them cross the Rubicon during the... shortly after the election, during the litigation, where some hipster Rasputin, this guy with the nose ring in Silicon Valley, deplatformed the duly elected sitting president of the United States.
00:15:59.000Regardless of what you think happened in the election, the guy's the president, and this Oligarch took him out and he could take him out and it wasn't just him they all worked in concert with one another and I Sort I mean this is actually a lot of the topic of my my book my second book But my first book with words, which is called speechless and it's it's about this this problem of free speech
00:16:22.000You know, I think it gets back to your point, Tim, which is so right.
00:16:25.000The reason that I think we keep losing ground and we lose ground, and maybe they pat us on the head and they're nice to us when it doesn't matter, but we still keep losing, is because we are only thinking about ourselves.
00:16:36.000We're only thinking about this individualist, hyper-individualist ideology.
00:16:41.000We're only thinking about the debate as one between free speech and censorship, when I don't think it's that.
00:16:46.000I think it's a debate between competing sets of standards And it actually leads us into a trap.
00:16:51.000This, I think, conservatives fall for this trap.
00:16:54.000I think the left understands free speech way better than conservatives do.
00:16:58.000I think we kid ourselves when we pretend that we understand it better.
00:17:22.000But the second way we respond, which I think we've probably all fallen into this camp at various times, myself certainly included, is we'll say, OK, no, I'm not going along.
00:18:46.000Well, they don't call me fascist, right?
00:18:47.000This is why I say I'm one of the worst things for conservatives.
00:18:50.000I think the reason why YouTube likes what I do, and I have a good go of things, when they ban conservatives, they want to make sure that conservatives stay on platform.
00:19:01.000And so there has to be something that's semi-acceptable to some conservatives.
00:19:05.000There are a lot of people who are conservatives who, like, I disagree with Tim, but, you know, I'll watch his show.
00:19:10.000But what happens when they get rid of Crowder?
00:19:11.000Right. Then the people who are on who are on YouTube who remain will be like, I'll still watch Tim,
00:19:15.000but then they're going to get a more liberal viewpoint.
00:19:17.000That's rotating the wheel and spinning and pushing the overton window to the left. I don't
00:19:21.000literally think I'm the worst thing for conservatives. I think we do good work here to try and be
00:19:25.000fair to everybody, but they're trying to rotate the wheel so that centrist becomes far right and
00:19:42.000But you're also, you're self-aware enough to realize They're doing it with you.
00:19:48.000You actually are the evidence of that Overton window shifting.
00:19:52.000And well, that's the point, though, is the Overton window, right?
00:19:54.000Which is, I think that sometimes conservatives, and I've been guilty of this myself years past, we pretend that there is a thing, total, absolute, 100% free speech.
00:20:24.000Now you have to say those words on TV.
00:20:26.000But why were you not allowed to say those things?
00:20:29.000Because all of those things—fraud, obscenity—are speech that undermines speech, at least in the understanding of the Founding Fathers and, I think, of the smartest people on this issue for all time.
00:20:42.000In the 1950s, you'd get canceled for being a communist.
00:20:45.000Today, you will get canceled for not being a communist.
00:20:49.000There's always going to be some kind of cancelling.
00:20:50.000There's always going to be things you can't say and you can't do.
00:21:02.000The Smith Act was an anti-communist act.
00:21:05.000But, you know, we've had these sorts of bills going back to the founding.
00:21:08.000Not particularly with communism, but with all sorts of subversive ideologies.
00:21:13.000Today, if you could go out, you could burn a flag in the streets, and the left has gotten the conservatives to defend that, to celebrate that.
00:21:22.000Nothing more American than burning the American flag.
00:21:24.000That's a big cultural victory for the left.
00:21:27.000I've always been a liberal, and I think people have a right to free speech.
00:21:31.000So long as it's their own property, they can burn it.
00:21:33.000Now, like I said, they're trying to call me a conservative.
00:21:36.000The people on Twitter are like, Tim's a right-winger, you right-wingers.
00:21:39.000Now, the funny thing is, I got called left by a right-wing outlet, and right by a left-wing outlet, and so I just, like, screenshot it and put it on Twitter, and I'm like, I have found the singularity, like, people don't realize centrism exists, and they think centrism is, like, agreeing with the worst parts of, like, you know, the left and the right.
00:21:54.000No, it's like, agreeing that some people on the right have it right, and some people on the left have some good points.
00:21:58.000There's something very conservative, by the way, about centrism.
00:22:01.000I mean, I'm slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, but there's something really Burke-ian, something really conservative about centrism.
00:22:11.000This was kind of the beginning idea for my book.
00:22:15.000I wanted to take the left-wing intellectuals seriously.
00:22:19.000Because, you know, we do this all the time on the right.
00:22:20.000We say, oh, you know, the critical theorists, they're, I hate them, or Marx, or, you know, Gramsci, or whoever it is, Marcuse, right?
00:22:29.000But no one actually engages with them.
00:22:30.000And the thing about those guys, those radical left theorists, is they're super-duper intelligent, which is why they've been so successful and we keep losing.
00:22:41.000You know, I love quoting Marx when I can, to prove points about liberty, for instance.
00:22:47.000To be honest, there's only one I can actually reference, and it's, under no pretext shall arms and ammunition be surrendered.
00:22:53.000The working class should frustrate this by force if necessary.
00:22:58.000And so I tweeted, under no pretext shall the right to keep and bear arms be infringed with a picture of an M16 on a trans flag.
00:23:06.000Because I'm like, freedom, liberty, and guns.
00:23:25.000And he really didn't like the Jews, even though he was.
00:23:29.000He's a racist, anti-Semite, who believed in owning guns.
00:23:33.000It's closer to alt-right than you're gonna get to anybody on the left.
00:23:36.000Actually, you know, we were talking about Seamus from Freedom Tunes, because he was just here, but he has a very, very popular cartoon you may have seen, where the woke left, desperate to stop the Nazis, use a time machine to bring World War II soldiers to the future.
00:23:48.000And then when they try explaining to them what's happening, the soldiers...
00:23:54.000They're like, you know, our president is a fascist and then they give him a brochure and then the World War II soldiers go, Oh my, what?
00:24:21.000And the guy says, gradually, then suddenly.
00:24:24.000And that, you know, we've kind of gone through this gradually period, which is, I don't know, 60s, 70s, 80s.
00:24:31.000It seems to me like we are very much in the suddenly phase.
00:24:35.000I mean just think about we went from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton saying marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman to if you don't castrate your child you're a bigot.
00:24:46.000We did that in like six years or something.
00:24:49.000This is where I think an interesting thing happens.
00:24:52.000You're substantially more conservative than I am, but I, as a traditional American liberal over the past couple decades, have a red line on what I think does and doesn't make sense.
00:25:06.000She said, safe, legal, but rare when it came to abortion.
00:25:09.000And so that was where the liberals were 10 years before.
00:25:12.000So something happened, and I think it has a lot to do with social media, where, well, it's a combination of things, but I do think social media played a huge role in the rapid leftization, or whatever you want to call it, of the establishment, to where, like, I voted for Obama the first time because of the war issue.
00:25:31.000I didn't vote for him the second time.
00:25:32.000I consider myself to be, you know, younger, anarchy, leftist, got older, kind of learned some things, and then was like, I'm a liberal.
00:25:39.000Then I got older and I was like, actually, I should open my mind and listen to people
00:26:57.000You must validate every single desire that they want.
00:27:01.000And so, very quickly, on a whole host of issues, not just abortion, you go from, hey, I have this disorder desire, please just tolerate it, to, if you don't take your kids to watch me do this thing, and you don't put it on Nickelodeon shows, then you're a bigot and there's no true equity in the world.
00:27:18.000Or there was the dad in Canada who got arrested for not using the proper pronouns for his...
00:27:26.000Well, no, because I don't know what the actual gender of the child is, because depending on which source you read, they'll say something different.
00:27:33.000So, you know, you'll read the New York Times, and it'll say the man's daughter, and then you'll read, say, the Daily Wire, and it'll say the man's son.
00:28:36.000Language, it's symbols that we use to refer to objective reality and try to shape the kind of world that we want to live in and recognize reality.
00:28:47.000If we cannot do that, there is no self-government.
00:28:56.000The interesting thing about when it comes to, and this is a really obviously dangerous subject for YouTube, especially, you know, it's like walking on ice because they're ready to just hit the nuke button.
00:29:05.000But I was reading something about, um, I can't remember what it was.
00:29:08.000It was a year or so ago about a world, world-class athlete who had won some competitions.
00:29:15.000The individual used he, him pronouns, but was biologically female.
00:29:20.000It completely altered the context of everything because In certain sporting events, I can tell you who the world-class top athletes are.
00:29:31.000There's probably several names in, say, the WNBA you've probably never heard of.
00:29:52.000LeBron James, particularly woke in many ways and pro-CCP.
00:29:57.000And we all know he's like the cream of the crop, the best of the best, they say.
00:30:00.000He commands hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
00:30:03.000Let's say you have, and again I'm saying this with the utmost respect, I'm trying to explain a concept of linguistics and understanding of reality.
00:30:10.000Let's say you have a WNBA player who is called the top of her league, the best of the best, commanding the highest salary in the league.
00:30:19.000And then the person comes out as trans.
00:30:21.000So in the encyclopedia, encyclopedia, they change all the pronouns from she to he and him.
00:30:41.000Well, it matters to the very essence of the society.
00:30:46.000I mean, you know, you love philosophy.
00:30:48.000And so this There's this very shallow idea that, you know, you keep your religion out of my politics.
00:30:54.000Look, man, that's... to quote the dude, man, that's just your opinion, man, you know, so don't... we're just going to talk about taxes or whatever.
00:31:12.000Cult and culture, they come from the same root word.
00:31:14.000Ultimately, we're talking about first principles, who we are.
00:31:17.000The traditional understanding for our whole civilization, everywhere, everywhere in the world, certainly in this country, is that we are, you know, body and soul.
00:32:15.000I got the Adam's apple, various other appendages.
00:32:18.000But if on some deep metaphysical level, I feel myself to be a woman, Not only is it sort of complicated, you know, and I'm a little bit... I'm just a woman.
00:32:28.000Because my self, my actual self, has nothing to do with my body.
00:32:32.000You can't live in a society that simultaneously holds these contradictory views of what human nature is.
00:32:48.000It comes up a lot, but I think there was like a very important point that I brought up to Jack, or to Vijaya, and it's that when I said your rules are inherently biased against conservatives, they didn't understand this.
00:33:00.000And then I said, conservatives view the phrase misgendering differently from the way you view it.
00:33:05.000And you can argue that you're in the majority, they can argue they're in the majority.
00:33:09.000How do you rectify that bias you have?
00:33:12.000If half the country votes for Donald Trump and the other half doesn't, it's fair to say that half the voting body that are active in politics believe that misgendering someone means to use pronouns that don't align with their biological sex.
00:33:48.000Which is why I go back to the politically uninitiated versus initiated.
00:33:52.000My thing comes down to probably, like, more libertarianism in the small L sense, not the libertarian party, because, you know, they get kind of kooky.
00:33:59.000In that, if someone comes to me and says, here's what I'd like to be called, I say, no problemo.
00:34:14.000And I think it's causing serious damage, as you probably agree, to discourse and politics.
00:34:20.000The argument was that there's a high rate of suicide among trans people therefore.
00:34:23.000Yeah, and my argument It's not even I'm arguing against the right of individuals to be respected You know, I don't think everyone has a right to just have respect.
00:34:32.000I do think society My personal opinion is we try to give people the benefit of the doubt towards respecting them until they prove otherwise But it does raise this question which is and and this is actually just as dangerous for society.
00:34:45.000It seems to me what the conservatives are saying is if I see a man who wants to be called a woman and you call him a man you're showing him respect because you are you're not treating him like a crazy person you're treating him like someone who can understand reality and you're just saying look this is this is how I see it pal it kind of looks like you're a man and if you lie to him then you're being very disrespectful you don't lie to people that you have respect for but I think on the left the argument they're making is lies in this case even if we're all we're gonna all admit you know he's not really a girl but it's nice because it's socially constructed we should all do it
00:35:20.000Lies are compassionate, and the truth is cruel.
00:35:24.000And, you know, that's not a great premise for a society to begin with, and it's one that I would certainly reject.
00:35:29.000I think at the very least it's exactly, you know, everything you outline, the conservative view on why you're actually being respectful, it's exactly the problem with the rules these social media companies have.
00:37:36.000Certain types of speech are illegal for a reason.
00:37:38.000So free speech means we've all agreed we're not going to say certain things.
00:37:42.000And it's like they've taken on this role of arbiter that they want to decide for us that we can't say certain things because it's dangerous, that it will prevent actual free speech.
00:37:53.000But I don't think that that's for corporations to decide personally.
00:37:57.000Not historically in our country, but that is what's happening now.
00:38:00.000And it's why I think the reason conservatives lose is because the left makes a procedural argument and they make a substantive argument.
00:38:08.000And what I mean by that is the left has a view of what free speech is in the abstract, and then they're going to enforce certain speech rules.
00:38:16.000The right has this kind of ahistorical, now we've adopted it over the last 20 years, just like total free speech and there's no limits to anything.
00:38:25.000But free speech has no meaning to people who have nothing to say.
00:38:29.000Freedom of belief has no meaning to people who don't believe anything.
00:38:32.000You know what the reason I think it's not just conservatives who are losing because obviously to you I'm definitely not a conservative to the right I'm definitely not a conservative to them whatever fine but we are losing and whatever that we is it's a combination of different factions in politics but the reason is Well, I don't think you're interested in lying, cheating, and stealing.
00:38:59.000I like sitting down and having conversations with people.
00:39:01.000I believe in respecting... For me, when it comes to pronouns or whatever, I give the benefit of doubt towards respect.
00:39:09.000I like to sit down and have conversations.
00:39:10.000I don't like to manipulate people into doing my bidding.
00:39:13.000However, the issue I have with modern leftism as it stands is the authoritarianism of it, where they believe The moral framework of wokeness is might makes right.
00:40:17.000And what I mean by that is, to your point exactly, fascism is an atheistic, statist philosophy that basically just worships the exercise of state power.
00:40:28.000That doesn't work with my worldview, because I think that there are some things that are true.
00:40:35.000But this is something that conservatives don't want to acknowledge.
00:40:38.000When I say they don't want to say anything, what I mean is this.
00:40:40.000You get the squishy types who say, well, look, you know, if we tell Drag Queen Story Hour that they can't twerk for kids at the library, then they might tell us we can't go to church on Sunday.
00:40:50.000And I say, like, first of all, they're already telling us we can't go to church on Sunday.
00:40:53.000But second of all, If you cannot distinguish between twerking for toddlers and going to church on Sunday, if you can't say one of those is better than the other one, then you have lost your faculties of judgment, your moral conscience, which is the prerequisite for self-government.
00:41:16.000Let's say I'm sitting in my arbiter's chair and I see a leftist say, we should be allowed to have Drag Queen Story Hour.
00:41:24.000And then to my right is a conservative saying we should be allowed to go to church on Sunday.
00:41:28.000I say, To you and your community on the religious side, you should be allowed to go to church and your community should function as you see moral and fit.
00:41:37.000And this other group, they live in a different society.
00:41:39.000If you guys want to have and live your own ways, I respect that.
00:41:42.000The problem, though, is one group is telling you what you can and can't do because they're trying to impose their will into your community.
00:41:49.000But in their defense, I am trying to impose my will on theirs.
00:43:14.000And so it's a real challenge of where the lines are in terms of the actual physical boundaries where we're going to say we will enforce our morality.
00:43:22.000Well, I'm sure a line for you would be like the kids stuff.
00:43:25.000I think this is true, a line for most people, because what do we always say?
00:44:00.000From a philosophical point of view and from a moral framework standpoint, my question is, Are people who vote for certain things allowed to live certain ways if they choose?
00:44:11.000And at what point does someone's community get to impose their will on another community?
00:44:14.000Well, it depends what they're voting for.
00:44:16.000You know, at one time, I got to meet Scalia a couple times when I was a student.
00:44:20.000I have no idea how I stumbled into this opportunity.
00:44:23.000And someone asked him, I think it was a question about the Second Amendment, they asked him, hold on, Mr. Justice, because you're saying that it's this individual right to these guns, but only these guns and not these other guns.
00:44:32.000How do you decide And his answer, I thought, was deeply conservative and deeply wise.
00:44:36.000He said, you decide very, very carefully.
00:44:40.000And I think we need to decide these things very carefully, too.
00:44:44.000One stumbling block, I think, for a lot of people on this issue is the nature of liberty.
00:44:50.000You know, right now they're saying that the kid should be able to be castrated if he wants to, because that's his right.
00:44:57.000That's his liberty if he wants to do it.
00:44:59.000But then we say, well, kids don't really have liberty because they're not educated, and the whole point of a liberal education is you master your liberty.
00:45:05.000I think the problem here is this conflation of liberty and licentiousness, meaning the current sort of modern lib view of liberty is that liberty means do whatever you want.
00:45:15.000Whatever your base desire is, just do whatever you want.
00:45:18.000And the conservative view of liberty, the view of the founders, the view of the Christian view, the pre-Christian view even, is that liberty is not the ability to do whatever you want.
00:45:26.000It's the right to do what you ought to do.
00:46:14.000It should be legal insofar as you have to go to designated facilities that regulate and actually wean you off of it.
00:46:21.000So instead of having someone go in the gutter, they go in for a legal, you know, session or whatever, and they can regulate and limit so that they can actually... With the purpose of getting them off the drug.
00:47:04.000You know, to me, that whole thing was crazy because, you know, growing up being liberal, what it meant to me and what my understanding of the things we argued for was respecting individual liberties and civil liberties and civil rights.
00:47:41.000But their argument, which they really pushed in the 1970s, the radical feminists pushed this, is that the personal is the political.
00:47:49.000There's this great essay by that name.
00:47:51.000And this woman recounts how the New York radical women's groups, they would meet up, I refer to them as wine and cheese soirees, you know, these sort of housewives or unmarried women would meet up.
00:48:02.000But very often when the bourgeois housewife and the mother of two would show up, the woman would go there and she was happy as a clam walking in.
00:48:09.000And then during the struggle session they would raise awareness and the woman would leave.
00:48:15.000Resentful and irritated and because she's now aware of her own oppression and this is called being liberated and then the women would go out of there.
00:48:24.000You know, I used to do nonprofit fundraising and these offices, they hire large groups of people.
00:50:38.000You take a bunch of people who are happy and excited for their job and you put them in a room and you're good.
00:50:43.000But one person gets negative and then within a week, everyone's performance dropped dramatically.
00:50:49.000And do you see what that company understood?
00:50:52.000Is that the personal is the political.
00:50:53.000So if you have a company full of pissed off people, then you're gonna have a bad company.
00:51:00.000And if you have a country, to get back to that earlier example, you have a country full of heroin addicts, it doesn't matter how wonderfully written your constitution is and how beautiful your Supreme Court building is, if your nation is full of individuals who are atrophied and sick and disordered, You're going to have a bad country.
00:51:23.000So it's remarkable how easy it is to spread anger and negativity and how hard it is to stop it or spread the positivity.
00:51:31.000It's what they call runaway breakdown in science, where one electron in a cloud of plasma will go and then all the other ones follow it rapidly and cause lightning.
00:51:39.000As we know, that's the formation of lightning.
00:51:41.000And because electrons are such lightweight, they move and they follow each other very quickly relative to the proton.
00:51:48.000This is a hard segue, but I want to talk about, um, one of the articles from the Daily Wire about, uh, wokeness in movies.
00:51:56.000And I do think it's relevant because I think what we're seeing in commercial industry and in movies and shows is this kind of, you're in a room with 30 other people and one person's pissed off.
00:52:11.000And the reason why I think we're seeing movies and commercials and marketing go this direction is, one, there has been a liberal bias in the establishment media for a long time, academia, and that meant, I think it's probably, you know, following civil rights, because I think everybody, for the most part, today in America, objectively believes civil rights were a good thing.
00:53:03.000And so the only conversations that can happen are racism is bad or something in that context.
00:53:09.000So what happens then is when you create a Twitter or a Facebook and it creates the massive room where everyone can share their rage and enrage other people, we end up with industry, commercials, movies, media, government, and everything.
00:53:24.000So, you know, our culture has become built upon this low morale, demoralized, angry, Angry about what? You know, you were saying earlier, like,
00:53:34.000um, what right do we have to say, like, I want you to change, like to impose your will on
00:53:39.000some other person. I think the you twerking for kids is bad. Yeah. And I think we do have the right to
00:53:44.000say that. And of course now that's on social media. And, but sometimes you don't have the right
00:53:51.000to say, like, I think you should commit this crime because that's could be considered, I don't know,
00:56:14.000I mean, there's very popular memes about harming yourself on Reddit.
00:56:20.000And the funny thing is it's created a derivative set of memes where these Gen Zers who make jokes about dying Don't know that older generations don't know it's a joke.
00:56:49.000Social media has created, uh, it's, it's the foreground and people don't realize that it looks really big because it's right in front of our faces, but it's actually really small.
00:56:59.000So let me, let me, let me pull some of this up.
00:57:06.000The majority of Americans don't believe diversity requirements should be a significant factor in whether or not a film is nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards according to the findings of a new SurveyMonkey poll commissioned by the Daily Wire.
00:57:19.000They say 63% of respondents agreed that films should solely be judged on their artistic merits, while only 24% of respondents say diversity should be a significant factor.
00:57:29.000In a film's nomination, the other respondents indicated they were unsure.
00:57:34.000Nearly half of non-white respondents, 48%, said artistic merit should be the sole consideration, while 38% said diversity should be factored in the nomination decision.
00:58:38.000So I think back to like, you know, old content, old shows back in the day that I thought were progressive in a sense or talk to civil rights for things for kids that were done right.
00:58:47.000I always reference Static Shock, the cartoon.
00:58:49.000I don't know if you're familiar with it.
00:59:03.000And it was done in a very inquisitive way that explained a point.
00:59:06.000Today's version of politics in shows like Wokeness and Diversity Requirements are bashing you over the head with anger about how you're evil and wrong and we're mad at you.
00:59:16.000It's very, very different from just telling someone what would be right, you know what I mean?
00:59:20.000Well, I think part of it is because, getting back to your might makes right argument earlier, One would hope that in a civilized society we can all just persuade one another through arguments that hey my view of this social question is right and so here's my argument but because the left is now basically abandoned that and and I don't just mean they don't make good arguments and their arguments are no good I mean
00:59:42.000as a product of their radical ideologies over the years, they have come to deny the reality
00:59:47.000of objective of the objective world, right? They'll actually say things like objective truth,
00:59:52.000that's actually a white supremacist dog whistle, things like that. So that if they're going to
00:59:59.000And so it has to be angry or at least threatening in the sense that if they want to get you to go along with their program, they've just got to make you do it.
01:01:19.000When they see those three movies where it's all white men, their reaction is to make a movie where they insult and berate and belittle white men.
01:02:09.000Not just gay pride, it's like fat pride, skinny pride, slut pride, right?
01:02:14.000All these various marches to embrace pride, which a friend of mine once said it used to be... Interesting.
01:02:19.000I think it was Thomas Aquinas called it the queen of all vices, and now my friend referred to it as the vice of all queens, which I think that's very... that's not nice.
01:02:50.000No shot at the incarnation of the good.
01:02:51.000But you do have the incarnation of evil in the character of The straight, white man who knows that he's a man who, right?
01:02:59.000It keeps getting narrower and narrower.
01:03:02.000We talked about this before the show a little bit, moral frameworks.
01:03:04.000And something I've definitely mentioned on the show, that there are a lot of liberals in this country who are like, if you need religion to be moral, then like, I'm scared of, you know, what you really think it's like, what you would do without religion, you must be crazy.
01:03:19.000And the example of Bill Maher, who would say something like, I don't need religion to have morals.
01:03:24.000And they don't realize that their morals are built upon the Judeo-Christian framework.
01:05:03.000He slaps his name on every building he ever saw.
01:05:05.000But it's because he understands that there are limits to politics and there's limits to what he can do.
01:05:10.000I mean, when he comes in, he says, look, You know, I'm a flawed guy, but I fix things.
01:05:14.000We're going to make it a little bit better.
01:05:16.000Conservatives traditionally have this idea.
01:05:17.000You can't remake the world into this utopia.
01:05:20.000To me, that's a very, very humble position.
01:05:23.000I think we can rag on Trump for his character and persona as a representation of some of the worst things, like turning American culture up to the 11 and just really blasting the saturation he turns orange.
01:05:32.000You know, the casinos and the supermarkets.
01:06:42.000They taught me that as a kid, that yes, you want to be prideful of your things, and it's good.
01:06:47.000And in a lot of ways, it does help you succeed in a capitalist society.
01:06:52.000But do you think, when I say, I mean it just seems to me we're using this word pride in different ways, like when I say I'm proud to be an American, aren't we just talking about love of country, patriotism, sort of an extension of filial piety, like I agree there's a degree of national pride that's a really bad thing when you say like, Every other country is awful and we're just going to take them all over and everything.
01:07:12.000But in a way, America, I think, doesn't do that.
01:07:38.000So much so that now it's become very difficult, if not impossible, to assimilate all of it.
01:07:44.000We're talking about millions of people every single year.
01:07:46.000And if you even raise the prospect of, hey, maybe we should cool it a little bit until we assimilate
01:07:52.000everybody, most people will look at you like you're crazy.
01:07:55.000Do you think the Catholic Church just told people pride is bad because they wanted to keep control of people?
01:08:00.000No, well, pride made Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
01:08:03.000I mean, pride is the sin in the Garden of Eden.
01:08:06.000Actually, Whitaker Chambers, ex-communist who wrote this great book Witness, which actually helped bring Ronald Reagan from the left to the right, He said that communism is not a new ideology.
01:08:17.000Communism is the second oldest faith of mankind.
01:08:19.000It's the great alternative faith that began in the garden when the serpent told Adam and Eve, ye shall be as gods.
01:08:26.000And that presumption to be as a god, that is the Bible story.
01:08:38.000We've stumbled onto this talk about America and we were talking about Hollywood.
01:08:41.000So I'm going to make this segment happen because I'm so excited for this.
01:08:44.000The first thing I want to say is this.
01:08:46.000If I could offer you up, all of you guys listening, a TV show where a guy takes an American flag and brutally beats Antifa.
01:08:55.000And, you know, he rejects a bunch of woke ideas.
01:08:57.000He's repeatedly told by, you know, people about how, uh, you know, You know, you shouldn't wave that flag.
01:09:05.000It's the white man's flag, and that you gotta understand.
01:09:08.000And so you have this black man who says, nah, I like the flag, and he picks it up, and then there are these people who are like, we should have open borders, and we're gonna smash the flag, and then he just beats them with it.
01:09:17.000Would that be a show conservatives would want to watch?
01:09:48.000And I wonder if there's an element of pride in assuming Hollywood does this.
01:09:53.000So not, maybe not giving it a chance and maybe being a little more open-minded.
01:09:58.000So we have this, this, this, uh, segment from, uh, marvel.com or this, this article.
01:10:03.000Cast and creatives behind The Falcon and Winter Soldier discuss patrionism, supremacy, Captain America's mantle.
01:10:10.000And you have this quote from Anthony Mackie, who plays, excuse me, he plays the Falcon.
01:10:17.000He says, for Sam, it's a constant battle of how do you fight for a country that's never fought for you, remarks Anthony Mackie, explaining in many ways, the one thing that held up the moniker of that shield was the idea of who Steve Rogers was, which is Captain America.
01:10:29.000That comment to me was really interesting because it does, I think, in many ways show that Marvel, they're woke and they don't get it.
01:10:35.000For Anthony Mackie to say that, a country never fought for you, I mean, I think one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the world was the Civil War, quite literally, to end slavery.
01:10:43.000Among other, you know, peripheral factors, but that was a key component.
01:10:47.000But here's what I gotta say about this show, and what Hollywood is doing, and what we need to be careful of.
01:10:51.000I'm seeing a lot of people tell me I'm wrong because I said the show's not woke.
01:10:58.000It addresses issues of race, but quite literally, I'm gonna spoil the show for those who haven't seen the finale, because the finale came out and I was so excited watching a dude reject wokeness, pick up the American flag, and beat Antifa with it.
01:11:14.000I mean that, like, I don't literally like Antifa getting beaten, but the bad guys are called Flag Smashers.
01:11:25.000And because they have super strength, they're allowed to kill whoever they want.
01:11:29.000She literally says to... There's a soldier with PTSD.
01:11:32.000He watched his best friend, who's a black man, get killed.
01:11:35.000And she says, his life doesn't matter.
01:11:36.000And I was like, that's an amazing indictment of these fake woke Antifa who would use someone for political points if they could get ahead and then literally tell you to your face they don't matter.
01:11:46.000Anthony Mackie plays a black man who questions whether or not he should wear the American flag, ultimately decides to do it, and they even show a scene where there's another black man who says, no self-respecting black man would wear that shield.
01:11:59.000And Anthony Mackie says, I know there's people who'll be mad at me for wearing this, but, you know, he wants to fight for this country and he'll be damned if someone tells him he can't do it.
01:12:07.000And then he's literally wearing the American flag, chasing down open borders extremists.
01:12:13.000I mean, there's definitely a message about racism being bad.
01:12:16.000But it sounds like a more classically liberal or even a conservative statement about why racism is bad.
01:12:22.000Well, it's obviously conservative in the sense that America is good and the flag smashers are bad.
01:12:27.000I mean, just in the most basic sense, that is a conservative message.
01:12:31.000You're going to make me... I was at one and a half Marvel products is what I... You're going to make me go to two and a half now.
01:12:37.000I certainly think there's elements that people could call woke, but I wonder if what a lot of people... I did say, I tweeted, it was getting too woke.
01:12:44.000And it was after this point where a car pulls up, a squad car pulls up, and you got, you know, Anthony Mackie, and you got Falcon and Bucky Barnes, a white guy and a black guy, and it was this very stereotypically, like, racist moment where the cops were like, sir, are you alright?
01:12:59.000But I'm like, I'm gonna watch it because I don't want to fall into this trap where I'm like, that's what I woke I won't watch it.
01:13:05.000Yeah, and then I was amazingly surprised there was a point where apparently You know, Sam Wilson, the Falcon, black man, is, you know, Bucky Barnes apologizes, saying, I didn't realize what it meant for a black man to wear, you know, that shield and be Captain America.
01:13:21.000But he's like, he doesn't want to do that.
01:13:24.000He has a little kid tell him, he's walking on the street, a little kid goes, it's Black Falcon.
01:13:33.000And I'm like, you are just the falcon.
01:13:35.000Like your race is not relevant to you being a superhero who's awesome.
01:13:39.000And when he decided to defy people in this black community who said, you think you can come in here because you have that white man's shield.
01:13:48.000He's like, Steve Rogers didn't do this to you.
01:13:49.000And then he decides to wear the American flag representing the country.
01:13:54.000For every reason he felt like he was wrong by this country or didn't fight for him, for everyone telling him that America was bad and doesn't represent him and hates him, he still believed in this country.
01:14:04.000And I'm like, it's like hardcore nationalist.
01:14:09.000I'm actually, I'm wondering if it's Chinese propaganda in that they have now incited Antifa to go riot and burn things down for a couple of years.
01:14:16.000Now they're going to start making art about why we should fight them.
01:14:43.000When you when you unleash violence, you don't get to control it.
01:14:48.000You know, actually, things this is when you begin a war, you know, things quickly spiral out of out of control.
01:14:54.000And that that's clearly what's going on here.
01:14:56.000But I am I'm actually glad you told me this about Marvel, because conservatives do this a lot where they they'll see a little because because we're so abused.
01:15:05.000Because this whole culture abuses and abuses, just smacks us all the time.
01:15:09.000The minute we see something, we say, OK, that's all.
01:15:48.000And my point was, I think we're in too divisive of a time to be making a video where liberals are kidnapping and hunting down conservatives.
01:15:54.000They might think it's like a nice movie.
01:16:07.000There was like, it made fun of everybody.
01:16:09.000And I'll say this about Falcon and Winter Soldier.
01:16:13.000Maybe it's conservative, like you should watch it and tell me what you think.
01:16:17.000But I think it's actually fairly centrist.
01:16:19.000I think it's fairly, it's not trying to, in many ways it opposes wokeness, but it does address the animosity and the feelings of racism in an interesting way.
01:16:28.000So I think there's a lot of people who, I'll put it this way, to me, Wokeness represents insulting, denigrating, beating someone over the head, telling them they're stupid or evil or wrong or privileged.
01:16:41.000Whereas actual social justice, as I understood it, would be like someone calmly and explaining to you with respect how they feel when it comes to racism.
01:16:51.000So when you go woke, it's really, you're going, you're getting angry.
01:16:55.000But you're, it's almost like, if I was going to insult you and say, you're stupid, this person, that person, your identity, that to me is like what we see with wokeness.
01:17:05.000It's this idea that white people have some kind of inherent badness to them or something, that whiteness represents more, it's the most insane thing.
01:17:14.000So you could take on social justice and be like, I think you shouldn't be twerking for kids.
01:17:17.000But if you start going, you're an idiot for twerking for kids, then you're becoming woke.
01:17:22.000It's it's well, there's there's a couple couple things one I think a lot of wokeness is a quest for power not a quest for compassion certainly So you're wrong bend your knee or else I'll take your job away.
01:17:35.000Yeah, whereas what I see in the Falcon winter soldier is you know, there's one guy who one of the characters is Seems to me to represent wokeness Animosity towards white people and the American flag and the main character rejects that and says now I like this flag I'm gonna fight for this country
01:18:03.000Part of what the left does is just change the terms all the time, so that's the new one.
01:18:07.000But it gets back to something that Karl Marx said, which is getting back to quoting Karl Marx every so often.
01:18:14.000Karl Marx, in a letter in, oh gosh, I forget the year, he called for the ruthless criticism of all that exists.
01:18:24.000And this was taken up later by radical Marxist theorists and a practical politician, Antonio Gramsci, in his construction of what you'd call cultural hegemony, Western Marxism.
01:18:35.000This is taken up in the Frankfurt School and critical theory, which is now we see the derivation of critical race theory.
01:18:42.000That is the woke indoctrination comes from critical theory and Once you get past all the pretentious jargon in these crazy theory, what is the theory?
01:18:51.000The theory is to criticize It's the same thing Marx called for it's just because guess what?
01:18:56.000I I've noticed this about bigots, you know, my friend Andrew Klavan points this out a lot and Bigots are not always wrong about the other guy.
01:19:05.000They're just wrong about themselves You know, they're really good at criticizing everybody else, but they don't see their own flaws.
01:19:12.000Everything is susceptible to criticism So it's a very very easy sort of new pseudo academic discipline and there's no end to it.
01:19:20.000There's gonna be these I think, you know, one of the ways to look at it is I had a conversation with a bunch of Trump supporters over dinner when I was in, I think it was in California.
01:19:29.000This was during, like, the Trump campaign era.
01:19:32.000I think it was maybe just after he got elected.
01:19:35.000And I was talking about historical racism.
01:19:39.000And immediately the reaction was like laughter and like, you know, oh yeah, yeah.
01:19:48.000And then I explained to them like redlining and blockbusting where we actually have legit racist policies in this country that have a negative impact on communities of color into the modern era.
01:19:58.000But institutionally, we've actually made that all illegal.
01:20:13.000I actually have no problem with seeing that in a TV show.
01:20:15.000The issue is when, instead of saying, like, Michael, let me explain to you something about my experience, they say, you're a stupid white man!
01:20:24.000And, like, when movies are predicated upon berating and insulting you, that's get well, go broke.
01:20:30.000Well, you know, the late philosopher Roger Scruton pointed this out.
01:20:33.000He said, civilization thrives on Forgiveness, confession first, and then forgiveness.
01:20:40.000And when I confess that I've done something wrong, even if it's confessing historical wrongs at the national level, whatever, I sacrifice my pride, and when you forgive me, you sacrifice your resentment.
01:20:52.000And we have both sacrificed something that we cherish, that really means a lot to us.
01:20:57.000And that's the only way you can move forward.
01:20:58.000But if you're not going to get that, if you're going to have a whole culture permeated by resentment, where you get it in school, you get it sometimes as a matter of law, and you get it even when you want to relax and go to the movies, and that's all you get.
01:23:14.000But what's going on right now is that if you go wave the flag, the American flag, Or you don't go along with some woke fashion to castrate kids or something, then you lose your job.
01:23:59.000Yeah, I was in Hollywood as an actor, and after I started doing that, no one would cast me.
01:24:04.000They thought I was dangerous, which I was, because I would have called them out and destroyed that disgusting secretive community I would have.
01:24:17.000People do forgive, but if you have a job that you can lose, you'll probably lose it if you go that route and you try to be humble.
01:24:26.000If you work for yourself, you're in a much better position.
01:24:29.000And YouTube ads, you know, you can kind of work for yourself there.
01:24:32.000I don't know, I'm getting off on a tangent.
01:24:34.000Well, you can build a business, but I find it fascinating that the left, I think, is consumed by pride.
01:24:42.000I think that's a big factor, and I think when you are, you can't admit when you're wrong.
01:24:47.000And if you can't admit when you're wrong, you can't improve yourself.
01:24:49.000Will you ever notice this about stupid people?
01:24:51.000Is stupid people Think that they're really really smart and then smart people the first thing you notice about smart people Is that they're very aware of how stupid they are and it's not false modesty They're actually aware of it because maybe I don't know Maybe the smart person met a smarter person one time and just kind of put it all into perspective It is a it is a fail proof the rule of thumb the the loudest voices in the room who are true
01:25:16.000I will never admit that they're wrong.
01:25:18.000You've got to listen to people to discern that for yourself because if a smart person says something that a stupid person doesn't understand, the stupid person will tell the smart person they're not making any sense and that they're the stupid.
01:25:51.000You know, when you humiliate yourself, you no longer have any dignity.
01:25:56.000You're sort of offending your own dignity.
01:25:58.000When Christ says, for instance, love your neighbor as you love yourself, well, if you truly hate yourself, Then, you know, it's not gonna be great for your neighbor.
01:26:06.000So there is a recognition of human dignity here.
01:26:09.000I mean, that kind of explains a lot of leftism as well.
01:26:14.000A lack of self-confidence, a lack of understanding who you are, and that same level is translated into other people they also have no empathy or sympathy for.
01:26:23.000There's also... virtue and vice are real things.
01:26:41.000I mean, clearly something is gnawing at them.
01:26:43.000And I say this at various times in my life.
01:26:47.000You know, I was an atheist for 10 years and I acted like it.
01:26:49.000You know, you can really give yourself over more to just kind of doing whatever you want, vices and all this.
01:26:55.000There are other times when you try to avoid that and you try to tame your will down.
01:26:59.000And I will just tell you, It's better.
01:27:03.000There is a reason that people have long sought the virtuous life.
01:27:08.000And if you have a country that is just wracked by this shame and this guilt and this resentment, this anger and this self-hatred, and they don't know what to do with that, You're gonna, it's like a powder keg.
01:27:54.000So the Federation is a united federation of planets.
01:27:59.000It's very much reminiscent of the idea of America with classically liberal values.
01:28:03.000And there are Klingons, and oh, they're enemies.
01:28:06.000When the next generation was made, which was, you know, I think 1989 or 88, 89, maybe, they, uh, all the truckers are gonna be mad at me for not knowing the exact year.
01:28:13.000They, they, the show starts with a Klingon serving on board a Federation ship to show that in the time span from the first series to the second, peace has been achieved.
01:28:24.000In the story, what happened was a distress signal was sent out by a Klingon colony that was being attacked by Romulans.
01:28:31.000Aliens started attacking, killing women and children.
01:28:32.000The Federation Enterprise of its era went in without help and they all died trying to save their enemies.
01:28:43.000And the Klingons saw that as a great act of honor because they're a culture of honor and warriors And so that's what ignited a peace agreement.
01:28:50.000I just bring that up because I'm really, that story is so awesome, this amazing writing about how honor actually, like what it really meant.
01:29:00.000And that you had this war-like warrior race that watched these, you know, classically liberal federation types say like, we're going, we're probably going to die, but we want to save our own enemies.
01:29:10.000I think back to these stories about Batman and Superman refusing to kill at all costs because it was about what was true to them, what was right.
01:29:17.000And what was honorable and now we have a moral framework.
01:29:21.000Yeah in wokeness That's built upon just having power which means they will
01:29:26.000sacrifice you They will they will they will they will figuratively burn
01:29:29.000you at the stake because they want power There's no honor but honor honor doesn't it couldn't
01:29:34.000possibly exist because we're actually told these two contradictory frameworks, right
01:29:39.000These two contradictory anthropologies, one of which is we're meat puppets and all of these metaphysical things like honor, love, joy, dreams, it's all just delusions.
01:29:49.000It's just synapses firing in our brain.
01:30:09.000And I think part of the reason they tell us to believe in both of these contradictory ideas at the same time is what Orwell described as doublethink.
01:30:18.000The thing about doublethink is it makes you unwilling and unable to reason, because you've got to hold the two contradictory ideas at the same time.
01:30:26.000Both of them exclude the real world that you're describing, which is, oh, there's something beyond my will.
01:30:33.000There is such a thing, and we can deny it all we want, but, you know, I recognize it when I see it.
01:30:51.000I'm not saying that Klingons are real.
01:30:53.000It was written by people in the United States who believed in the value of it.
01:30:57.000Imagine you have a moral framework that understands honor.
01:31:01.000In this, the Batman won't kill the Joker.
01:31:04.000Excellent writers have explored what happens when you have people with no honor meeting people with honor.
01:31:09.000And one of the storylines in the DC Universe is that the Joker poisons Superman and then detonates a nuclear device, killing millions.
01:31:19.000And Superman has a psychotic break where he says, if you just killed him, this would have never happened.
01:31:25.000If you choose to sacrifice yourself to save your own enemy, and they don't share your morals, they'll laugh as you do it, and then slit your throat once you've saved them.
01:31:34.000You will pull them up from the cliff, because you're the good guy with honor who says, I must save, even the bad guy, and then as soon as you do, they'll try and push you off the edge.
01:31:44.000So you have people in the United States right now, I being a fan of Star Trek and these stories of Batman and these, you know, there's just stories for kids, but it inspired me and it made me understand what was honorable and moral.
01:31:56.000That means I'm not willing to lie, cheat, or steal.
01:32:06.000If you look at the British in the Revolutionary War, for instance, the British were fighting in lines, standing up out in the open, honorably, and the Americans were hiding in the woods, stealing, lying.
01:32:46.000He was a killer, but he was a justified killer.
01:32:48.000And I mean, I think this is what we're getting at here, which is the honor of it all means, well, you say, okay, I want to be honorable, but then if my enemy doesn't recognize that honor, he's going to slit my throat, and what a fool I am, he's going to laugh at me.
01:33:07.000And you have to recognize, you can't fake it, I guess is what I'm saying.
01:33:12.000It's very popular right now, I've noticed, in the kind of center and some disaffected liberals and on the right to say, man, all those old things we used to have like dignity and honor and religion and all, you know, I know that that's good, but I can't bring myself to believe in it.
01:33:28.000Douglas Murray says this a lot, the British writer.
01:33:31.000He'll say, look, I'm a Christian atheist, you know, I think it's good, but I can't bring myself to believe in it.
01:33:36.000And the thing is, I sympathize with these people who know that it's a good thing, but they can't bring themselves to actually believe in it.
01:33:54.000Maybe not in this life, but in the life to come.
01:33:56.000That there actually is an objective good.
01:33:59.000It's not just a sort of nice social thing that we all agree on to have a good society.
01:34:03.000Because if you just pretend, then I think when it comes down to it, the real rubber meets the road, It's going to fall.
01:34:11.000We're about to jump to superchats, but I want to tell you my kind of, I don't know, I don't know what you'd call it, religious view or so.
01:34:20.000So first, I absolutely believe in God.
01:34:23.000And I think one of the challenges a lot of people have when it comes to the idea of God is that they have, I guess, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but a child's view of what God would be.
01:34:54.000You know, so I think that's the first mistake people make and that they assume when people talk about God, it's a guy with a beard sitting on a cloud.
01:35:00.000And I'm like, you know, like a child would imagine it or a comedian would depict it.
01:35:35.000So, from my understanding of philosophy, the things I have read, the things I think, I understand that view, especially having grown up Catholic, but I started to think about, I need a function, right?
01:35:48.000Like, let me try and look at the universe to what we claim to know about it, and we certainly don't know much, and a lot of these ideas are probably wrong, that's what science does, it gets things wrong, then it proves upon them later.
01:35:58.000And I started thinking about entropy and negative entropy.
01:36:02.000And I started thinking about what life does, organizing free energy into complex systems.
01:36:08.000From the most rudimentary of self-replicating proteins, to single-celled organisms, to multi-celled organisms, to beyond that with ecosystems.
01:36:16.000Where at first you have a multicellular organism consuming free energy and literally converting it into a replica of itself and expanding and having more and more kids and then eventually, you know, ten fish becomes a hundred fish.
01:36:28.000They're converting those particles into fish.
01:36:33.000Eventually you get abstract creations like an ecosystem where beavers start manipulating their environment and then, you know, an acorn falls and a squirrel plants it for the winter but forgets where it is and then a tree grows.
01:36:43.000Then you get humans who start creating complex systems in the abstract.
01:36:47.000Languages, ideas, they start mapping the universe.
01:38:02.000When I give the answer that it's to know God and enjoy Him forever, it that's just a more elaborate version of that answer right which is that the the good the true and the beautiful as the transcendentals of Being or have some sort of relation to one another and the ultimate expression of that is is in God and but your answer is totally right I think I have to complicate it though because in order to grow children you have to kill and consume So destruction is a part of this organization.
01:38:28.000Yes in order to have negative entropy you must create more entropy, but we are I think I think I agree with you in that what we are doing as a species is we are getting to the best of our ability to try and know God.
01:38:43.000I think, in my opinion, we are here because God wants us to protect and create and grow, and through our expansion of knowledge and philosophy and understanding, we are coming to know God better and better.
01:38:54.000Have you guys seen kinematics in action?
01:39:10.000I don't know how you feel about fate and free will, and if we're just destined... Well, I think providence is real, and free will is also real, and that's a complicated, you know, situation.
01:39:19.000But yeah, surely there is an order to things, and there is a providence and an unfolding of reality.
01:39:25.000Let's put a tack in this, and we'll do the bonus segment, because we can go a lot longer, because we do have to do Super Chats.
01:39:31.000A lot of people have questions for you, Michael.
01:39:32.000But then we can do a... This is going to be a fun conversation.
01:39:34.000I'm going to take all of Michael Malice's questions on that Super Chat.
01:41:26.0003D Pyromaniac says, let's see how long until Knowles plugs his newest book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order on Amazon, at least until they find out what it says.
01:42:08.000And what you need to understand about The Next Generation is that it was just written by a bunch of dudes in the late 80s and early 90s in America who held these values and were explaining to them to people.
01:42:52.000I can't wait to see how many times Michael will plug his new book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order during tonight's show.
01:43:00.000So I will say, so my book... Your audience, man.
01:43:04.000So I've really conditioned them like Pavlov's dog.
01:45:14.000Well, because if the number that they gave you is a more persuasive story, Well, that's all they care- Right, if you don't- It was like CNN.
01:45:47.000It's, you know, it's the question of, um, you know, once you stage your glorious revolution, how will you protect your, how will you protect from the next glorious revolution?
01:46:02.000You know, Fidel Castro, when he's 92 years old, he's still wearing the military fatigues, like it's still the Cuban Revolution 50 years later.
01:46:10.000Do you think that, um, like along the lines with that last guy super chatting that you, in order to help people, you're trying to explain a potential end to the road that is disastrous to warn them?
01:46:32.000No, and I mean it because maybe what people need to realize when they're like, ah, it's woke, it's really bad, maybe from a conservative perspective, it's got too much social justice cuts, like, oh, you know, racism and whatever.
01:46:41.000But maybe to somebody who's been beaten over the head by the wokeness, Yeah.
01:46:45.000You open the door by showing them something they can relate to.
01:46:48.000Hey, racism is bad, you know, look, the cops are bad.
01:46:50.000And then you have the villains literally be Antifa.
01:46:53.000And then they're going to be like, Captain America can stop you.
01:46:55.000I believe in America and the American flag.
01:46:57.000It's also, don't forget, the left, it's not that the left loves Antifa.
01:47:02.000They recognize Antifa is a very dangerous thing that wants to burn it all down.
01:48:17.000I said, OK, so why aren't you doing it?
01:48:19.000And he said, there is a procedural difficulty here, which is that you'd be using different departments of the federal government.
01:48:28.000Even within the DOJ, you'd be using different departments.
01:48:30.000And we've never done something like this before.
01:48:33.000The big tech companies are a new thing.
01:48:35.000That's why they've been able to Do whatever they want.
01:48:38.000And the government is not particularly good at taking on new challenges, and it's especially not good when it's benefiting in some ways from these challenges.
01:48:46.000And so it kind of left me a little crestfallen and pessimistic about it, because I don't see the incentive, and frankly I don't even see the ability of these bureaucrats and DOJ officials to take them down.
01:49:11.000I was so stoked when he was like, I'm going to wear this flag and go beat up these, you know, open borders, you know, black clad individuals who think they can do whatever they want.
01:50:35.000Pitches at Timcast.com is now the email and just keep in mind for everybody we get a ridiculous amount of emails and we just we try to go through them but You also gotta understand, a lot of people send bad emails, a lot of people send really great ones, and we gotta sift through it and figure out what we can and can't do.
01:50:53.000A lot of long emails, a lot of not-so-nice emails.
01:51:29.000You can yell fire in a crowded theater.
01:51:31.000Don Lemon does this thing where if you look at Don Lemon from like seven years ago, he was defending Bill O'Reilly sometimes.
01:51:41.000Don Lemon was much more moderate, and as with all those guys at CNN, I think they just, for a while, they said, okay, you got to go far left, and what do they do?
01:52:08.000Actually, I don't... I think there is already a Timcast mug available if you go to the store.
01:52:14.000But it's... I think the only thing you can get is... I made this little drawing a couple years ago of the Illuminati pyramid with the... It's the...
01:52:43.000Because we were talking, and we were talking about getting dragged on Twitter, and then Ian said, Don't fight an alligator underwater. You want to don't don't
01:52:51.000play their game. Don't get in the mud. That's true That's a good that's a good point
01:52:54.000But you know, I was like these people on Twitter You'll be you'll be talking about a serious idea and also
01:52:58.000they'll change the subject and try to insult you Yeah, and then he just goes yeah, you don't want to fight
01:53:01.000an alligator underwater. Yeah, I was like, that's an excellent analogy
01:53:05.000So we're gonna have a mug of you know, you drink fresh coffee out of that
01:53:57.000TWXRated says Tim is controlled opposition.
01:54:00.000Well, I am certainly not controlled opposition, but I am fully self-aware of the issue of the shift in the Overton window and why YouTube likes the idea that they have a channel like mine.
01:54:15.000But I think they have, like, sock puppets that comment that try to sway your mind as a YouTuber or as a public opinion so that you, without even realizing it, start to repeat talking points.
01:54:25.000So maybe we're all being... I also know there is a recording device under the beanie.
01:54:46.000Although it's much easier these days, you know.
01:54:48.000Ben is spending more time in Florida, in the land of the free, and now I get to be in Nashville, which I guess is also kind of the land of the free out there.
01:54:58.000We're all in a way better mood ever since we got out of Mussolini's hellhole.
01:57:46.000Man, I'm sorry to hear that about your mom.
01:57:48.000It's a very, very difficult thing to go through.
01:57:52.000I'm trying to think, you know, my mother also died when I was young, and I was like an atheist at the time.
01:57:58.000I didn't have any addictions or anything like that, but But it would, you know, I didn't have like a really coherent moral framework and it's a very difficult thing.
01:58:07.000So I hope in some way, you know, I do hope that you can come to not, you know, not just a wishful thinking or wish casting as you arrive at a moral framework or some understanding of the world.
01:58:20.000He says that if you look for truth, you might find comfort in the end, but if you look for comfort, you'll find neither truth nor comfort, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
01:58:31.000So I think if you look for truth, hopefully you'll get a bit of comfort out of that.
01:58:48.000Man, I thought we were going down in another kingdom question, and then we get to... Yeah, well, yeah, the well-regulated militia would obviously have to be an antecedent to the state, right?
01:59:00.000Because if you've got this well-regulated militia, where's the militia getting the arms from?
01:59:06.000Where is the militia getting its organization from?
01:59:08.000Especially in the case of the revolutionary era.
01:59:11.000So you're saying we should embrace the left's argument on the well-regulated militia because it means the government has to give everyone guns.
01:59:36.000Yeah, so we'll need it We'll need a Department of Gun Services regulated by the government where you can walk in and as soon as you're 16 They've got your choice of a handgun and long gun.
01:59:45.000Yes, and you get one of each as well as a box ammo for both now I do think there should be a very simple test, like with driving test, but not an identification system.
01:59:57.000You know, like, obviously you gotta go in with your ID or whatever to prove who you are so you can get the gun.
02:00:15.000I used to be kind of like middle of the road on 2A.
02:00:18.000I was like, no, I understand why we have it.
02:00:20.000But I think, you know, I've seen, seen some arguments about common sense, gun reform, and then I had some real conversations and I was like, okay, yeah, I was definitely wrong about that.
02:00:28.000So long as second amendment exists, it must be respected in all its forms.
02:00:32.000Then the riots happened and I was like, I would like one 50 BMG please.
02:00:36.000And I get a couple of those bullpup shotguns.
02:00:38.000And, uh, how many guns can I legally buy right now?
02:01:06.000Then I have the kid and we moved to a house because we moved to Tennessee and now I'm just like here is the wallet.
02:01:14.000I want all the guns Yes, at least just to be You know, I think I'm obviously joking about but I love how like these it's not leftist leftist love guns Yeah, they quote Marx all the time about it.
02:01:28.000It's these like urban uppity liberals who are very anti-gun.
02:01:32.000Yeah, and And they all gloat to each other about gun nuts and I'm
02:01:34.000like dude I don't take guns that seriously. I have a bunch because it's
02:01:38.000like a metal tube. Yeah, it's not It's not gonna jump up and attack you by the way. Yeah, it's
02:01:43.000also Well, they refer to the you know, the gun nuts and all
02:01:46.000these crazy people and then they say things like, you know yeah, he had a
02:01:51.000200 round clip in his fully semi-auto, you know, and they just have no idea what they're talking about, you know
02:01:58.000Do you think that teaching kids, or like 16-year-olds, how to build a gun, maybe 3D print parts and construct a gun, and then fire it and learn how to fire it, would make them be more likely to commit criminal acts with a gun?
02:02:50.000I was watching Jack Reacher the other day, and he walks up to a car, he hits the guy, he takes his gun, and then he just goes, click, click, click, and disassembles it and throws it.
02:02:57.000And I'm like, see, a kid should be able to do that.
02:02:59.000Should be able to press, you know, pull the hammer or whatever off and just... I felt phenomenally more confident after I fired a gun.
02:03:06.000I've only been to the range once, but Luke was showing me, Luke Rutkowski, how to, like, arm, how to load a gun, where the safety is, how you trigger it, how do you arm it.
02:03:14.000And it, I feel just like so much more confident as a human knowing that Well, you know what Homer Simpson says about this.
02:03:20.000He says that when you hold a gun, you feel like how God must feel when he holds a gun.
02:04:37.000I actually can't, from the writing of that question, I can't tell if that was just a coincidentally a Christopher Knowles or if that is my actual cousin Christopher.
02:05:52.000Just lower your voice and you can do either show.
02:05:55.000Dan says, I just want Michael to know that had a really intense experience with edibles and watching compilations of him owning libs helped me through it.
02:07:48.000If that's what it means, I'm against it.
02:07:50.000I love my country, even though my country is driving me crazy.
02:07:54.000Love of country is an extension of your love of your parents.
02:07:56.000Maybe you've got good parents, maybe you've got bad parents, but your parents are your parents, your kids are your kids, and I could no more disavow my country than I could disavow my own family.
02:08:05.000This is the best country on the planet.
02:08:06.000I'm open to the conversation and the logistics of that kind of thing, but I'm also kind of like, I like this, the defensive structure of the United States.
02:08:16.000I mean, the legal structure for all its problems right now is still just like the best.
02:08:20.000I suppose the prison system in Norway is better.
02:08:53.000But I go to Italy, I've gone a handful of times, and after, I don't know, like five or six days, you just think... I'll give you an example.
02:09:03.000I was in Siena, and it's a nice old medieval town, and I go to the sandwich shop.
02:09:07.000The sandwich shop is called a paninoteca.
02:09:09.000Pan, it means bread, it's the first part of the word, right?
02:09:12.000So I go, it's like noon, go to get a sandwich.
02:10:07.000It is an evil generation that looks for signs and wonders.
02:10:10.000It is a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders.
02:10:13.000And a lot of people, you know, who are maybe going down the wayward path.
02:10:17.000This happened to me, really, when I was, you know, in my full wayward youth and atheistic phase.
02:10:23.000Eventually, after the intellectual parts of it, of believing in God came through, after I was convinced about Christianity, Only then did I start to have these sort of numinous experiences, which you call religious experience.
02:10:34.000And a lot of people feel really honored by that.
02:10:37.000And it is, in a way, if you recognize this sort of semiotic view of the world, all these rich in symbols.
02:10:43.000But also, you could read it as God looking at you and saying, Hey, buddy!
02:12:37.000And I always thought that was a great, great joke that people expect, um, too much of miracles.
02:12:42.000I think they expect too much of signs.
02:12:45.000And it's an interesting question about what, you know, to me, what faith is, because I am not theistic by any stretch of the imagination, no church for me, no Bible and stuff.
02:12:52.000But I will say this, I have seen some stuff in my life.
02:14:17.000All right, everybody, smash that like button, subscribe to this channel.
02:14:22.000If you like the show, share with your friends and go to TimCast.com.
02:14:24.000Right in the top right corner is a little button that says Members Only.
02:14:26.000You can click that, sign up, and then in the Members area you'll see we are going to have an exclusive Members Only section.
02:14:31.000We're going to go, we're going to talk about God and faith a little bit more and Ian and magnetism and we'll have some crazy profound Well, I don't know.
02:15:08.000It's a lot about what we're talking about.
02:15:09.000I actually, I can give you a sort of brief description of it.
02:15:12.000It's a history of political correctness from 1920 to 2020.
02:15:16.000It is following the leftist intellectuals who brought us along.
02:15:20.000I learned writing the book that the leftist intellectuals who created this thing called PC or wokeism know a lot more about free speech than we do and that we give them credit for.
02:15:30.000It breaks down why every step of the way we lost.
02:15:34.000In my humble opinion, and it does briefly sketch a way I think that we can move forward, which is to ditch this silly abstract talk about free speech absolutism.
02:15:44.000academic freedom, whatever, and start talking about real substantive moral visions that necessarily will include certain ideas and exclude other ideas.
02:15:54.000We need to take what the left is doing, which is immoral and unjust and wrong, and we need to do the just, right, good version of that because they wield political power much better than we do.
02:16:06.000We'd love to have you back when it comes out.
02:17:15.000You can follow me at Sour Patch Lids on Twitter.
02:17:19.000Join me in my quest to have more followers than Sour Patch Kids.
02:17:23.000We're gonna go over to TimCast.com, which should be up in maybe an hour or so, but I have a feeling this conversation might go a little long.
02:17:28.000It's Friday night, and it's a really fun conversation.
02:17:30.000These are the conversations I love more than anything else, is like the deeper question.
02:17:34.000So, TimCast.com, and we'll see you all there.